Steve Jobs: a lifetime of visionary disruption in advancing technology

Throughout the 2000s, Jobs further challenged the status quo with a rapidly snowballing strategy of investment in innovation that included a well-funded push to enhance the company's PowerBook mobile computers; the development of the iPod in 2001; the creation of an open source web engine to power the company's own Safari browser; the acquisition of a series of application development firms that resulted in the creation of a suite of professional, creative and productivity apps including Final Cut, Logic, Aperture, iLife and iWork; and investments in multitouch that would ultimately result in the iPhone, iOS and last year's iPad release.

Core to all of these developments was a reimagining of the Mac platform as a digital hub, a strategy Jobs unveiled in 2000. Jobs' comprehensive vision for what Apple could build was increasingly crafted around Mac OS X, a refined and modernized edition of the NeXT software that first appeared in 1988.

In 2001, Jobs unveiled the first consumer edition of Mac OS X, tied to a revolutionary new graphics system that drew windows and other elements using the same hardware accelerated graphics techniques that video games use. The new operating system was described as having a fifteen-year development strategy behind it, and over the next decade Apple regularly launched new reference releases that enhanced performance, added new functionality, and increasingly simplified and embellished the usability of the system, forging a new path in consumer computing technology divergent from previous products.

Parallel with Mac OS X, Jobs unveiled plans to revolutionize the market for digital music with iTunes and then the iPod, which together have not only taken over and transformed the music business, but have further changed how videos, ebooks, and mobile software are sold and distributed.

When Microsoft announced it would defeat the increasingly successful iPod using a Windows-like strategy that leveraged its PC manufacturing partners, Jobs fought back with innovation, delivering powerful but easy to use new product revisions that grew smaller and thinner as the company's manufacturing and design prowess evolved. This year, Microsoft admitted complete defeat in unseating the iPod after a decade of attempts with PlaysForSure and Zune.

As the iPod became Apple's cash cow, pundits next looked to smartphones as its most likely competitor, but Jobs directed the company to develop its own replacement for the iPod, starting with internal designs for a tablet-sized web browser device and then focusing efforts on building a handheld computing device that leveraged the core functionality and development tools of Mac OS X and Apple's device savvy with building iPods, then deploying the new device as a radical rethinking of the smartphone.

Jobs' iPhone melded the Mac and the iPod into a single device, subsidized by mobile carriers in a way that would create a massive revenue stream for Apple and allow it to continue innovating at a breakneck speed. Jobs then turned the iPhone itself into an iPod with the iPod touch, which has since become the company's most popular iPod device. Counting both iPods and all other iOS devices, Apple has sold well over half a billion mobile devices in just over a decade, wildly overshadowing its original Mac business.

But Jobs didn't abandon desktop computing. Instead, his company has developed Mac OS X and iOS in tandem, sharing core technologies between the two and adapting the desktop to take increasing advantage of the usability concepts pioneered for iOS, including enhanced animation in the user environment, simplified user interface controls and multitouch navigation.

One year ago, Jobs' "Back to the Mac" public keynote address outlined not only how the company would adapt Mac OS X Lion to incorporate developments from its mobile iOS devices, but also that Macs would gain the same App Store software market for buying applications.

Of course, major elements of Jobs' presentation were built upon the wild success of the iPad, a product that was originally envisioned within Apple before the iPhone, but left to gestate while the iPhone built Apple into a super power of mobile device sales.

By the end of the 2000s, Jobs had not just beat Microsoft in music players, but had also usurped the company's crown in leading desktop operating system development as well as taking away Microsoft's mobile phone aspirations entirely. When the iPhone first appeared in 2007, Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer scoffed at the idea that Apple could take more than a couple percentage points of the smartphone market. Over the next four years however, Apple, under Jobs' leadership, would become the number one mobile device maker on the globe, inhaling the vast majority of the entire industry's profits.

Within the last decade, Jobs' Apple had also surpassed Microsoft in revenues and in earnings, but Microsoft isn't the only company decimated under the boot of Apple's marching advancement. Job's pace of innovation at Apple had also embarrassed Sony, once an undisputed leader in consumer electronics led by its Walkman brand. In mobile devices, Jobs simply crushed Nokia, RIM, Palm and even its former "iTunes phone" partner Motorola. Apple even managed to embarrass Nintendo, taking away the revenues supporting the portable gaming market through the development of the iOS App Store.

Jobs similarly disrupted the virtual lock on web videos and dynamic content that Adobe had maintain with Flash Player, introducing iOS as a tremendous impetus for web developers to abandon the proprietary Flash and adopt open HTML5 development instead. That action similarly effaced Microsoft's Silverlight, which aspired to simply embrace, extend and extinguish Flash.

Once again, however, Jobs formed an external partnership, this time with Google, to help deliver Internet services for iPhone, including Maps, YouTube and web search. And once again, Jobs' partnership turned into a rivalry when Google's chief executive initiated a plan to turn its internal Windows Mobile killer into a weapon against the iPhone, hoping to, like Microsoft, leverage partnerships with other hardware makers to take away the market Jobs had crafted.

In early 2010, it appeared Google's Android was overtaking Apple's iPhone business, facilitating the introduction of more innovative hardware with higher resolution screens and software features Apple hadn't yet delivered, including some features core to Google's own services, such as Maps Navigation. Verizon Wireless formed a key partnership with Android licensees, helping Google gain an important foothold in the market as sales of Android-branded phones increased dramatically.

However, by the middle of last year, Jobs introduced his own weapon: iPhone 4, a model that beat back complaints that Apple's design was tired and basic, its camera was weak and its screen resolution was lagging. On top of its new offering, Jobs presented FaceTime video conferencing and a further aggressive push in software ranging from video games to enterprise support, two areas notably lacking in Android.

After the release of iPhone 4, Android sales at Verizon began to plateau, with AT&T winning loyal new subscribers as the global market for iPhones exploded. With Verizon's faith in Android weakened, the carrier returned to Apple to gain access to the iPhone, subsequently helping to make iPhone 4 America's most popular smartphone model by far, with the 2009 iPhone 3GS remaining the second most popular model.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Most people term Steve Jobs' intensity as passion but it is indeed Love.

Love is the universal vital force that is creative and brilliant and to be in love or passionate about someone or something or an idea is really a symptom of Love.

It is that Love, that Life Force and Brilliance, that original and creative vitality, that Steve Jobs, like no other, put into his work, into his baby Apple Inc, into his many products, and I'm sure into his family, and that energy, once embedded into each and every product and into Apple itself, is recognized by everyone.

We all feel the Love, Beauty, Brilliance, Creativity, Joy and Light in Apple's products and, in a Love starved human society, that's why we desperatly want to buy them, own them, show them off. For they bring those very same qualities into our life as well.

Many Apple fans recognized this when they described Apple's struggles with their copycats as the fight between good and evil.

This Love is the energy behind Steve Jobs, Apple's products and Apple, Inc..

This Love is the energy Steve Jobs used to build his company and choosing its workforce and the reason why everybody, consciously or not, are relaxed regarding Apple's future without Jobs' physical presence. Apple is full of Love centric people who can do anything other than execute on the principles of Love and its many expressions. Even its organization, I speculate, is built upon that same core energy.

That Love energy is obviously expressed into the new Apple spaceship headquarters in more ways than one. It is like a castle protecting the Love inside. It's like a spaceship indeed, where dreams and vision can fly and become materialized in purity with little interference. It's shaped as a 0 (zero) which, like the number 1, spells Unicity and God. 0 and 1, the digital values.

Last but not least, Steve's comments about life and death came from experience: he "died" when he was thrown out of the company he started. But, while he turned that into an opportunity, he used it as the base to re-invent himself and start with a clean slate. And what this "death" brought him the most was summed up in this word: [b]Focus.[\\b]

Love, Brilliance (a derivative of Love) and Focus (a lot of Love).

His lessons to the world. His legacy. Our inheritance from Steve Jobs.

The world is now a better place, the world is richer!

I Love Steve Jobs.

Long live Steve Jobs!

Long live Apple, Inc.!

Wishes of Joy, Love and Light to all, especially to Steve Jobs' family and friends (Steve's family is indeed great).

Steve Jobs was a Buddhist in spirit. So his essence will always be with us. Just look in your hand, or on your desk, or in your lap, or as you listen. The essence of the man is right there in front of you. I think he will always be.

Steve, by human measure, did many great things. He will no doubt be remembered for many generations in history books and many people will write honoring articles about him. However, being a Buddhist, he did not recognize his need for a savior, Jesus, and will not be in heaven. We live in a pluralistic and relativist society, where we often hear, "what is right for you is right for you and what is right for me is right for me". It does not pain me to say this: there is only 1 afterlife and where you spend it is dependent upon the acceptance of being a sinner and thereby accepting that Christ died for our sins. That is what saddens me most about his death, is that he will not be in heaven. Im not trying to be disrespectful or put a downer on things: Im am just speaking the truth and it needs to be said.

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Beautiful words to live by. Whilst I was reading them I was listening to the radio. They were playing Fairport Convention's 'Who Knows Where The Time Goes' in memory of Bert Jansch who died yesterday. It was wonderfully apposite.

Steve, by human measure, did many great things. He will no doubt be remembered for many generations in history books and many people will write honoring articles about him. However, being a Buddhist, he did not recognize his need for a savior, Jesus, and will not be in heaven. We live in a pluralistic and relativist society, where we often hear, "what is right for you is right for you and what is right for me is right for me". It does not pain me to say this: there is only 1 afterlife and where you spend it is dependent upon the acceptance of being a sinner and thereby accepting that Christ died for our sins. That is what saddens me most about his death, is that he will not be in heaven. Im not trying to be disrespectful or put a downer on things: Im am just speaking the truth and it needs to be said.

Your truth my friend - and you are putting on downer on things. In fact, you are being offensive. Very offensive. The fact that you state that what saddens you most about his death is that he won't be in heaven, sums it up. The rest of us celebrates his life and mourn the loss of a great man - one that has put a smile on my face almost every single day for the last 30 years.